If adopted, the proposals would rescind a 2023 decision allowing school bus Wi-Fi to be reimbursed under the agency’s E-rate program, which has provided annual broadband subsidies to schools and libraries since its 1996 inception. The proposals would also overturn a 2024 ruling that extended support to off-campus Wi-Fi hot spots through schools and libraries.
“I dissented from both decisions at the time,” FCC Chair Brendan Carr said in a recent news release. “The Biden-era FCC chose to expand its E-Rate program to fund those initiatives long after the COVID-19 emergency ended — and do so in plain violation of the limits Congress imposed on the FCC’s authority.”
In the release, Carr also argued that the FCC’s prior actions wasted taxpayer funds by the “illegal funding [of] unsupervised screen time for young kids.”
Schools and libraries would thus, if the proposals are adopted, need to seek alternative funding for off-campus Wi-Fi in 2025.
LEGISLATIVE CONTEXT
When that program expired, the agency moved to incorporate some of its provisions into E-Rate; in 2024, the FCC voted to expand E-rate to cover Wi-Fi hot spots loaned by schools and libraries.
In a news release yesterday, FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, who supported the expansion of E-rate, warned that rolling back the program would leave students and families disconnected.
“Millions of students and seniors depend on hotspots and school bus Wi-Fi for homework and telehealth services,” Gomez said. “Now the FCC is moving to strip that connectivity away while doing nothing to make broadband more affordable.”
THE HOMEWORK GAP
In his statement, Carr argued that E-rate expansion during the pandemic endangered children by providing them access to unsupervised screen time. But opponents, including Gomez, state the FCC’s proposals would only exacerbate the nation’s homework gap — the inability to do schoolwork at home due to lack of Internet access — leaving students in rural areas and from lower-income families behind.
According to Joseph Wender, executive director of the Schools, Health and Libraries (SHLB) Coalition, the homework gap precedes the pandemic, and the FCC’s recent efforts helped to address longstanding inequities.
“The FCC was smart to put in place hot spot loaner programs and school bus Wi-Fi so that all students had the opportunity to continue their learning even after the end of the day when the school bell rings,” he said. “We know that learning does not stop at the school door. And in the age of the Internet, having connectivity at home is essential to do homework.”
If Carr’s proposals are enacted, Wender said schools, students and families will either have to determine how to bridge the gap themselves or fall further behind in digital literacy.
“Some schools in more affluent areas, the parents are able to provide connectivity at home, or the school district will be able to use their own funds to step in and close that gap,” he said. “But unfortunately, we know that in lower-income neighborhoods that won’t happen, and those students will simply fall behind and will be left on the other side of this widening homework gap in our country.”
Wender added that although there are numerous companies and organizations seeking to address the nation’s digital divide, there is only so much that can be done without federal subsidization.
As school communities await the FCC’s upcoming vote on Carr’s proposals, some experts have urged districts to prepare contingency plans that identify other sources of support while the future of E-rate remains uncertain.
